Why We Can’t Promise That a Feminist Space Will Be a Safe Space
Guest Post
by
Tracy Isaacs*
This post is a modified version of a blog-post that I recently wrote for Fit Is a Feminist Issue (a blog that I co-founded in 2012 with my colleague and friend Samantha Brennan) in the aftermath of a nasty discussion that broke out among feminists on the blog’s Facebook page. Without going into too many details, a meme was posted that upset people who felt it was “unfeminist.” They got angry and raged at the post and the blogger who posted it and subsequently deleted it, with an admission that it was a mistake for her to have posted it, an apology for posting it, and a request that if, in the future, people have concerns about the content of her posts, they kindly be nice about how they raise these concerns. In short, this blogger asked that, in the future, she be given the benefit of the doubt.
The unpleasantness of the comment thread surrounding both the original post and the apology post, to which I, in attempts to defend my co-blogger/friend, contributed in regrettable ways, led me and regular contributors to our blog to reflect upon the extent to which we can cultivate a community that feels comfortable and supportive to all who enter it. One of the sticking points was the request in the apology for people to try to “be nice” when they’re upset about our blog's content.
A common refrain to which the authors at Fit Is a Feminist Issue like to return is that we embrace "big tent feminism,” a feminism that tries to make space for everyone. That's a lofty goal, I know. It sounds wonderful. But can it be done? One of my favourite (and one of the most difficult) questions in feminism is this: "Is an inclusive feminism possible?" I use the question as a thematic frame for most of my teaching in feminist philosophy and women's studies, as a way to push students in my classes to think about inclusivity and intersectionality, not just as theoretical ideas, but in their actual material practices.
It's hard. We struggle. People get defensive. Misunderstandings develop. Hurt feelings. Anger. Difficult conversations. People are called on their privilege and need to look at that. People are afraid to speak for fear of offending, excluding, of saying the wrong thing on a multitude of other levels, of sounding closed when in fact they are open, hurting others' feelings, and having people be upset with them. Sometimes we find ourselves at an impasse. We have to agree to disagree or be stuck. These difficult conversations all occur in the context of feminism, where the majority of students are already there with respect to the broad strokes of it.
Although I do my best to manage the discussion in my classroom, to push it forward or in a different direction if any of the above takes place, to take the emotional temperature in the room and keep an eye on who might be falling silent, I can't promise a totally "safe space" where no one will ever feel shitty, be offended, get hurt, or say the wrong thing.
Because, guess what? Feminists disagree amongst themselves sometimes. We see things differently.
Oh, you might say, feminist disagreement isn't necessarily "unsafe." Well, that would be right. It isn't necessarily unsafe; but, offense can turn to anger and vitriol very quickly. We see this chain of events occur from time to time on our blog and even more so on the blog's Facebook page. This escalation happens for all sorts of reasons. We bring a lot of different experiences into the room with us, many of them the source of personal anguish and lasting trauma. When discussion goes sideways or in directions that become unpleasant, ugly, personal, and mean, it's hard to know who will be in the line of fire and what history the person who is angry is bringing to the interaction. If one feels some responsibility for the space (as we at the Fit as a Feminist Issue blog do and as all of us who teach do in the context of our classrooms), it is not easy to know what to do about it. Sometimes the content of our blog posts can be the instigator. We post a lot, share quite a bit of content from elsewhere on the blog’s Facebook page, there are many of us, we don't spend a ton of time on each post, and so on—there are many risk factors at play.
On the Fit as a Feminist Issue blog, we often gravitate towards what seems like a common-sense solution when things get ugly: tell people to engage respectfully with each other, not to be mean about it, etc. But, guess what? That seemingly sensible suggestion is mega-triggering for some feminists. One woman's "be nice" is another woman's "tone policing." There is no feminist on this planet who hasn't been told at some time or another that her anger is misplaced, that she should "be nice," that she "shouldn't" feel that way. It is a dismissive tactic used to undermine legitimate social justice complaints.
If a safe space is a place where you're insulated from all possible hurtful, harmful, or offensive comments, then even a feminist page can't promise that. It's not so much the misogynists who take us down—we can deal with them by deleting their posts and blocking them. It's much harder to take that same approach with other feminists. I mean, we're all on common ground when it comes to feeling despair about what Christine Blasey Ford endured at the Senate judicial committee questioning today, right?
I very much like questions that Fit Is a Feminist Issue blogger Cate Creede has posed, questions that press our blog’s contributors to think about what we are making:
"In our Facebook interactions what are we making? Community? Uncrossable boundaries? Winners and losers? Are we making invitations to respond, or are we making hurt creatures who are going to slink off to their own corners and reload?"
Obviously, we don't want to be making something shitty where people feel awful. As I’ve said, I myself felt awful when I engaged in a way that was unhelpful, more emotionally charged than I'd have preferred it to be, engagement that ultimately left me feeling emotionally drained and hungover. I was angry and defensive; instead of going off and breathing for a bit, I shot back comments, seeking to be understood.
The irony was not in the least lost on me that I acted in the same way as I perceived the people with whom I was angry to be acting. That I wanted them to have some compassion for my colleague/friend who had made the initial post when I exhibited none for the people who reacted to it indicates the type of logical block that takes hold. Although I could feel it happening, I was not able to stop. A certain adrenaline gets pumping in these situations. Tempers rise. Everything escalates. It's hard to think clearly. In situations like this, silence is a better option (for me anyway).
And when that's happening, the thing we least want to hear is "whatever, whatever, but do you mind being nicer?" As one of the angry people said (I'm paraphrasing), "how about trying to understand why we're angry?" By then, lines had been drawn in the sand and there would not be a lot of understanding.
I get it, even as I argued and swore (yes, I swore at a reader in the comments on the Fit as a Feminist Issue Facebook page), I recognized that we weren’t engaging productively, that people were getting more angry, more hurt, more frustrated. We reached the impasse, which was more frustrating because it occurred among feminists.
Feminist solidarity all the time would be wonderful, wouldn't it? That kind of sisterhood where we all get one other. But it isn't like that all the time. In the history of feminism, the non-intersectional feminism of privileged, nondisabled white women claimed to be that, to apply universally to the experience of women. Then feminists of color said, "Hang on, your feminism doesn't include me." And disabled feminists said, "Wait a minute, your feminism doesn't include me." And feminists who lived in poverty said, "You're not speaking to my experience." And feminists who didn't live in "The West" said, "The material realities of our lives aren't represented by your feminism."
The women in positions of privilege wanted a big tent, and they said it was open so that anyone could wander into it. But the tent didn't feel so inclusive to the women who struggled in ways that the big tent kind of neutralized and for which it didn't seem to make space. And so, the space didn't feel safe because they had things to say that couldn't be said without making the more privileged women feel defensive or attacked or just not quite as comfortable in the tent as they wanted to be and aspired to be. And when they felt that way, they had difficulty listening and spent more time trying to be understood, saying they didn’t intend to exclude anyone, they didn’t mean to offend or hurt or harm.
The road to an inclusive feminism that accurately represents differences among women (rather than assumes a homogeneous sameness) has been long and winding and difficult, sometimes even divisive, hurtful, harmful, and dangerous to women. No one is trying to make it this way. We aren't dealing with malicious motives. But invisible privilege—the privilege of asking others to be nice perhaps—yields a type of denial. It's not intentional, but it makes uptake of different experiences more difficult.
Does this mean that I don't believe in our "big tent"? Not at all. I believe in it very much as an aspirational goal. But, I am also aware that as big as the tent may be from my/our perspective, it doesn't feel totally open to everyone all the time. And yes, I would like all the people who enter, whether through the Fit as a Feminist blog or our Facebook page or the blog’s Twitter discussion, to be kind and respectful to each other. Why? Because truly, we are all feminists even if all feminists don't have exactly the same set of beliefs. Nevertheless, we can't promise harmonious non-hurtful interactions all the time.
A feminist space, whether moderated or not, is no guarantee of safety. In this post so far, I’ve been talking about classrooms and social media, but in recent years I have been present at feminist conferences where the space felt decidedly unsafe. We have seen feminist philosophy journals print articles, the very publication of which felt like betrayals of valued members of our communities. We have seen icons that we revere and respect appear as signatories on petitions supporting sexual offenders, thus leaving us scratching our heads and wondering whom to trust.
Each time such events take place, I try to learn something. I can say that I, myself, will attempt to do better. And I know that as a collective, the regular bloggers at Fit as a Feminist Issue, actually grow through these stormy times. We're not perfect (yet!). There will always be room to improve, to modify our practices, to do things differently. It never feels good to be attacked. So, we can hope that over time, we build up enough goodwill that when we misstep and someone wants to let us know, they'll be kind and not mean about it. Upon reflection, however, I think that sometimes even that might be too much to ask.
When people (including me) get angry, that vitriol usually lands on someone. And ouch. No one likes to be on the receiving end of fury. Sometimes, in my blog world, it's directed at one of the other Fit as a Feminist Issue blog authors. Other times, it's a member of our blog’s community, a reader who has ventured to post a comment. Social media is admittedly more complex than a classroom because the sheer number of interlocuters who aren’t in face-to-face interactions seems to make it easier to forget, or at least ignore, that the person on the receiving end of our anger is a human being. Yet the fact that we can post things on our blog (or other social media) that anger and upset people and that people's anger can land on us and others indicates that as much as we would love to keep it all nice and kind and civil and harmonious, we can't promise always to do that.
*Tracy Isaacs is a Professor of Philosophy and of Women’s Studies and Feminist Research at Western University, co-founder of and regular author at the Fit Is a Feminist Issue blog, and co-author, with Samantha Brennan, of Fit at Mid-Life: A Feminist Fitness Journey (Greystone Books, 2018).
posted by Shelley
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